Vimm's Lair: News

June 4, 2010

The new handheld Vaults are progressing well. All screen shots for the Game Boy have been completed and more Game Boy Color screens are added daily.

A new frameless version of Vimm's Lair is in the works. While it's not quite as efficient, once completed you'll finally be able to bookmark or link to any page at Vimm's Lair.

The order was placed today to add some more bandwidth to Vimm's Lair, roughly ten times more, which should speed up the site considerably (not that it's slow, but more never hurts). The upgrade should take effect sometime next week.

May 13, 2010

The Vault now supports playing games directly from your browser using the Java emulators vNES and vGBX. Each game in the NES, GB, and GBC Vaults now have a "Play" button which will load the game right in your browser. You must have Java installed and while not all games will work, most seem to play well. For now only the default controls are available and the option to configure your settings will be coming soon.

May 9, 2010

A new handheld section is open in The Vault and includes Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. Many screen shots and other information still need filling in but it felt complete enough to open for business. VisualBoyAdvance-M has also been added to the Emulation Lair and supports both systems. Enjoy!

April 27, 2010

A large refresh of The Vault is currently underway. Here's a little background on what's changing and why.

The NES Vault was first started thirteen years ago way back in 1997. Back then NESticle was king and it ran in DOS, which meant it could only read eight letter file names. Most other emulators ran in DOS too, so all the games in the NES Vault were given eight letter names. Since then, DOS emulators have fallen out of favor (no surprise) so there's no need to keep such short file names. One part of the refresh is to update every game to use a long filename, most of which will come from GoodNES.

The NES Vault was originally built by collecting ROMs from various sites, then along came a tool called GoodNES. It allowed you to list which games you had and determine if it was a "good" copy. This was very helpful in identifying missing games or replacing bad copies with good ones. There was also a companion tool which could fix NES headers to their "correct" values. While this was very helpful it sadly rendered Jigsaw's Gallery obsolete, so that part of the site was closed. This was all completed back in 2000, however those "correct" headers have changed over the years in subsequent releases. The header fixer is now included in GoodNES, so the next part of the refresh is to update all of the headers that have changed over the years.

The next part was rather controversial at once time, but after setting eight letter file names, using GoodNES to locate missing games and replace bad copies, and then fixing all incorrect headers, some new tools and emulators came along which supported a new title field. Using one of these tools, every game in The NES Vault was reviewed and it's title added to the game. It turns out this title was part of the new iNES 2.0 header. Unfortunately this new format was not adopted by the community and it caused headaches for the GoodNES folks, however it didn't seem to cause any harm to the games themself. Since the custom titles won't show in any modern emulators, and likely never will, the iNES 2.0 headers are being removed from all games.

The final part of the refresh is to update all of the English translations. There have been many Japanese games translated to English over the years but most have never found their way into The Vault, and some that have need to be updated. The translator's readme files will also be added if they are missing. The ultimate goal is for The NES Vault to once again have a perfect copy of every game released in the US as well as every complete Japanese to English translation.

So that pretty much covers the four parts of the NES Vault refresh. Much of it is already complete and the translations are currently being reviewed alphabetically. Everything should be finished gradually over the course of the next few weeks.

February 15, 2010

Several major updates were pushed out across the site which have been in the works for several weeks. The Vault database has been redesigned to be more efficient and the entire Vault and Vault Store were updated with it. Since every page needed reviewing, many cosmetic tweaks were made to make the site more user friendly. The new database also works with the brand new Vimm's Lair shopping cart, which is fully integrated with The Vault Store allowing for a smarter cart. For example, if you add two of something to your cart but only one is in stock, you'll get an error message and only one new item in your cart. The cart is also more tightly integrated with PayPal for a smoother checkout process.

To finish things up, Vimm's Lair is now using png images. Every screen shot in The Vault and most graphics around the site have been converted from gif to png. In general, each new png is 10%-25% smaller so they'll load a bit faster.

February 2, 2010

Welcome to 2010! Here's a quick roundup of the latest news.

After the November OS upgrade there were some issues with large downloads timing out. The problem was corrected in December and all is well. The download queue was also removed in favor of a site-wide bandwidth cap which seems to be working well.

There have been a few new emulator releases lately, including UberNES 2010, RockNES 5.03, and Snes9x 1.52. Head on over to the Emulation Lair to pick up installable copies. bsnes is also being considered for the Emulation Lair as it has been making much progress over the past couple years and is very active.

The Vimm's Lair installer has also been updated to fix an issue where the uninstaller did not remove start menu entries in Vista and Windows 7. In addition the installer will now only allow one copy of itself to run at once, in case it's clicked multiple times.

November 16, 2009

Vimm's Lair was down all Sunday evening for an OS upgrade. Everything should be back in order now so as always, please post any problems on the Message Board. Someone discovered the Kega Fusion installer contained RockNES instead so a new installer has been uploaded along with FCEUX 2.1.2.

October 14, 2009

Some new content is available in the Emulation Lair. The latest releases of RockNES (5.02) and FCEUX (2.1.1) have been added, and Kega Fusion will also be added to the Genesis emulators later today.

A couple months ago a custom Vimm's Lair installer was built for all emulators in the Emulation Lair which didn't have one. Today they've all been updated with some new features. You can now choose the start menu folder and it'll be removed when uninstalling (except in Windows 7, still working on that), and if you're upgrading the old version will uninstall first. Enjoy!

July 6, 2009

It's a belated report, but towards the end of May one of the hard drives serving Vimm's Lair died after 8 years of service. A backup was loaded onto a new drive but some files are still corrupted or missing and are being corrected as they are found. The latest AJAX download script for The Manual Project was lost, so manual downloads will continue to be unavailable until it can be rebuilt.


	The new handheld Vaults are progressing well. All screen shots for the Game Boy have been completed and more Game Boy Color screens are added daily. A new frameless version of Vimm's Lair is in the works. While it's not quite as efficient, once completed you'll finally be able to bookmark or link to any page at Vimm's Lair. The order was placed today to add some more bandwidth to Vimm's Lair, roughly ten times more, which should speed up the site considerably (not that it's slow, but more never hurts). The upgrade should take effect sometime next week.


	The Vault now supports playing games directly from your browser using the Java emulators vNES and vGBX. Each game in the NES, GB, and GBC Vaults now have a "Play" button which will load the game right in your browser. You must have Java installed and while not all games will work, most seem to play well. For now only the default controls are available and the option to configure your settings will be coming soon.


	A new handheld section is open in The Vault and includes Game Boy and Game Boy Color games. Many screen shots and other information still need filling in but it felt complete enough to open for business. VisualBoyAdvance-M has also been added to the Emulation Lair and supports both systems. Enjoy!


	A large refresh of The Vault is currently underway. Here's a little background on what's changing and why. The NES Vault was first started thirteen years ago way back in 1997. Back then NESticle was king and it ran in DOS, which meant it could only read eight letter file names. Most other emulators ran in DOS too, so all the games in the NES Vault were given eight letter names. Since then, DOS emulators have fallen out of favor (no surprise) so there's no need to keep such short file names. One part of the refresh is to update every game to use a long filename, most of which will come from GoodNES. The NES Vault was originally built by collecting ROMs from various sites, then along came a tool called GoodNES. It allowed you to list which games you had and determine if it was a "good" copy. This was very helpful in identifying missing games or replacing bad copies with good ones. There was also a companion tool which could fix NES headers to their "correct" values. While this was very helpful it sadly rendered Jigsaw's Gallery obsolete, so that part of the site was closed. This was all completed back in 2000, however those "correct" headers have changed over the years in subsequent releases. The header fixer is now included in GoodNES, so the next part of the refresh is to update all of the headers that have changed over the years. The next part was rather controversial at once time, but after setting eight letter file names, using GoodNES to locate missing games and replace bad copies, and then fixing all incorrect headers, some new tools and emulators came along which supported a new title field. Using one of these tools, every game in The NES Vault was reviewed and it's title added to the game. It turns out this title was part of the new iNES 2.0 header. Unfortunately this new format was not adopted by the community and it caused headaches for the GoodNES folks, however it didn't seem to cause any harm to the games themself. Since the custom titles won't show in any modern emulators, and likely never will, the iNES 2.0 headers are being removed from all games. The final part of the refresh is to update all of the English translations. There have been many Japanese games translated to English over the years but most have never found their way into The Vault, and some that have need to be updated. The translator's readme files will also be added if they are missing. The ultimate goal is for The NES Vault to once again have a perfect copy of every game released in the US as well as every complete Japanese to English translation. So that pretty much covers the four parts of the NES Vault refresh. Much of it is already complete and the translations are currently being reviewed alphabetically. Everything should be finished gradually over the course of the next few weeks.


	Several major updates were pushed out across the site which have been in the works for several weeks. The Vault database has been redesigned to be more efficient and the entire Vault and Vault Store were updated with it. Since every page needed reviewing, many cosmetic tweaks were made to make the site more user friendly. The new database also works with the brand new Vimm's Lair shopping cart, which is fully integrated with The Vault Store allowing for a smarter cart. For example, if you add two of something to your cart but only one is in stock, you'll get an error message and only one new item in your cart. The cart is also more tightly integrated with PayPal for a smoother checkout process. To finish things up, Vimm's Lair is now using png images. Every screen shot in The Vault and most graphics around the site have been converted from gif to png. In general, each new png is 10%-25% smaller so they'll load a bit faster.


	Welcome to 2010! Here's a quick roundup of the latest news. After the November OS upgrade there were some issues with large downloads timing out. The problem was corrected in December and all is well. The download queue was also removed in favor of a site-wide bandwidth cap which seems to be working well. There have been a few new emulator releases lately, including UberNES 2010, RockNES 5.03, and Snes9x 1.52. Head on over to the Emulation Lair to pick up installable copies. bsnes is also being considered for the Emulation Lair as it has been making much progress over the past couple years and is very active. The Vimm's Lair installer has also been updated to fix an issue where the uninstaller did not remove start menu entries in Vista and Windows 7. In addition the installer will now only allow one copy of itself to run at once, in case it's clicked multiple times.


	Vimm's Lair was down all Sunday evening for an OS upgrade. Everything should be back in order now so as always, please post any problems on the Message Board. Someone discovered the Kega Fusion installer contained RockNES instead so a new installer has been uploaded along with FCEUX 2.1.2.


	Some new content is available in the Emulation Lair. The latest releases of RockNES (5.02) and FCEUX (2.1.1) have been added, and Kega Fusion will also be added to the Genesis emulators later today. A couple months ago a custom Vimm's Lair installer was built for all emulators in the Emulation Lair which didn't have one. Today they've all been updated with some new features. You can now choose the start menu folder and it'll be removed when uninstalling (except in Windows 7, still working on that), and if you're upgrading the old version will uninstall first. Enjoy!


	It's a belated report, but towards the end of May one of the hard drives serving Vimm's Lair died after 8 years of service. A backup was loaded onto a new drive but some files are still corrupted or missing and are being corrected as they are found. The latest AJAX download script for The Manual Project was lost, so manual downloads will continue to be unavailable until it can be rebuilt.